Revolution Read Online Free PDF Page B

moon-shaped face. “Yes, they made me
this. There were others, too. Maybe thirty or more, I do not know
for sure.”
    “How’d you get out?” Anastasia asked.
    Istvan remained silent, his tongue working
overtime around his thin lips. When he spoke again, his voice came
out with anguish lacing every word. “In that place, I heard stories
of one person in America. She escaped and came here.” He looked at
Anastasia. “It was you.”
    “Me?” asked Anastasia. Her eyes grew round
with astonishment. “How did they know?”
    A shrug came from his narrow shoulders. “I do
not know, but the other prisoners, once we were changed, the guards
put us in separate prison rooms and sometimes talked to each other.
A guard told one of them and,” he shrugged again, “if one knows,
then all know.”
    Istvan’s story continued. The experiments
continued and used all sorts of animal/human combinations. Pigs,
elk, falcons’ DNA and more were combined with that of humans. Each
time, the Genesis Chamber had been used. The results were startling
in all cases, successes in some and too horrific for words in
others. Many died, but many lived.
    “There was one who lived, a prisoner who
called himself Szabo,” Istvan said. “I do not know his full name.
He say he is Hungarian, like me. I do not know where he come, er,
came from. I only know that he was large, very large and had hatred
of everyone. He killed three guards before Grushenko changed him.
He started fire one day in the complex, but Grushenko escaped. So
did some of the other changed people. I ran when fire started,
heard about commercial plane going to America and how you say,
stowaway?”
    He smiled for the first time, which revealed
a set of small white teeth. “I was a stowaway and I come to New
York. There, I do not know any people, but I know how to hide. I
saw news on television, see about people like me and listen. Then I
find you.” Gradually, his voice wound down and he sat on the floor,
staring at the wall.
    Harry sat back and considered all the
details. The experiments were ongoing, in Hungary and Russia, if
not elsewhere. This had to be the craziest thing going, yet it was
all true and it was happening here and now. “So you found us
here?”
    Istvan scratched his head with his hoof.
While he was still human looking for the most part, it seemed the
kind of move an animal would make. “I have good sense of smell.
That is all. I can smell odors from long way away. I have no
strength and I cannot fly. But I can smell difference in people and
animals. You are both and neither, like me. I know that smell.”
    Their discussion got interrupted by a knock
on the door. Harry opened up and a different agent stood there, a
short, stocky black man with a face like a cement block. Istvan
immediately scuttled over to Anastasia’s side and remained there,
quivering in fear.
    As for the agent, he gave Istvan a passing
glance before switching his gaze to Harry. “We got in touch with
Agent Farrell. He’ll be here in the morning. We’re going to keep
watch over you tonight and no, you don’t have a say in this. Those
are Farrell’s orders.”
    Harry wanted to protest, but they had the
guns and the authority. The taller agent came in, locked the door
and put a chair beside it. He took a seat while his counterpart
walked to the rear entrance to keep watch from the vantage point of
the lone window. With a quick move, he took out his pistol, ejected
the ammo clip to check it and then shoved it back in.
    “I guess we’re stuck here for now,” Anastasia
said with a note of resignation. “If it’s all the same to you, I’m
going to go to bed.”
    She got off the couch and started to walk
into the bedroom, but the taller agent’s voice interrupted her
journey. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “Over there,” Anastasia pointed at the
bedroom. “I sleep in a bed, remember? I don’t curl up by the fire
or on the window sill.”
    Her caustic reply caused Harry to